One More Time Before I Go
by l33 Destroyer of Worlds
Summary: Thrasymedes tries to protect his brother, in vain. Character death, warfarerelated violence, and probably bad language too.
1. Chapter 1

People were always in and out the tents; on a really crowded day, it was hard to tell who lived where, and who was just dropping by for a cup of wine or a new spearhead or the running tally of dead and wounded. This last was of particular interest; we were almost womanish in our fondness for gossip, at least in the closing years of the war. By that point, our ranks and theirs had bloated to such an extent that it was almost impossible to keep track of who was where, and who was dead, and who was close to it; how strange that our numbers should swell so much when we were all growing tired of the whole exercise.

I, however, had a brother, and it was my job to keep track of him. Locating Antilochus was not a particularly difficult task; he was usually in the same place, or not very far from it. Cornering Antilochus, persuading him that I was really serious, that our father really did want to see us, and that he had better come back to our part of the camp with me, and actually disentangling him from his chosen surroundings and bringing him back were tasks that required an act of Zeus.

Lacking only my helmet, I trudged over the hard, cracked earth. There must have been no fighting that day, although we were all prepared for it; I remember how empty the field seemed, and how I felt as though my breastplate was conspiring with the Sun to bake me alive. Actually, I would have vastly preferred to be baked alive than to go wrest Antilochus from the Myrmidon tents.

Or, rather, go wrest Antilochus from one specific Myrmidon tent.

Naturally, four people were trying to get in and seven were trying to leave; in the lull between battles, we took whatever opportunity we had to fill our immediate needs. _I left my spear in a Trojan shield. My charioteer says he needs new tack. I haven't gotten any oil for the past month and a half and I know that can't be right. I need a new breastplate that doesn't have a hole in it. I need new greaves that aren't dinged up. I need. I need. I need._

"I need my brother," I yelled over somebody's head into the dark din of the tent some fifty paces behind the quartermaster's. My voice sounded harsh, rather than urgent, as I had hoped. I couldn't see him from where I stood, but that didn't mean anything; he was often in and out. It was impossible to keep Antilochus in one place for very long. It would not have surprised me if someone had said, "Oh, sorry 'bout your luck, Thrass—last I saw him, he was headed out to the Argive tents."

It did surprise me when my brother's voice said, "Oh, sure, Thrass. One minute." I suppose he had grown tired, or was being kicked out so that the Myrmidon command could do its business. Or, possibly, he wasn't receiving enough attention; Antilochus was almost the baby of the family, much younger than Aretus and me. He had been, perhaps, fifteen when he came to join us, and he still took a boy's delight in warfare. He was still quite young, not yet twenty, and he knew how handsome he looked in armor.

He came out at the same moment as one of the Myrmidons came in; they stepped hesitantly around one another, swerved to miss each other, misjudged one another, and finally, crashed together with a terrific noise. I winced; Antilochus was not the type who would ever get out of the way for you, and I hoped only that he hadn't offended someone important.

"One more time before I go, then, Antilochus," the other man said. I knew his voice, although I had not seen his face—with arms that splendid, I should have recognized them, but they were still new, and I did not.

Achilles let my brother get away with all kinds of ridiculous stunts, perhaps because he felt responsible for him—it was, after all, he who had introduced Antilochus to some of the upper echelons. Perhaps, also, because he liked him; after Patroclus, I can't think of anyone else closer to him.

There was silence for a minute, and then my brother just laughed and laughed. Even as a young man, he still had a kind of nutty little kid laughter, as though everything were just _too _incredibly funny. He had laughed less in the past few years, and it hurt a little to admit to myself that I had missed the sound. "Save the last dance for me," he gasped back, and I could see that under the helmet, his face was red.

Achilles snickered. He never laughed exactly, at least not in my hearing—only sort of snorted or snickered, as though to say, _Yeah, that one's good. _Towards the end, it was always tinged with a certain sadness. Oh, not for the reason that you might think; it was just that Patroclus had loved a good joke. "Y'rall right, Antilochus." He clapped him on the shoulder. "Y'rall right."

"Guess I better go see what Dad wants."

"Guess you better," Achilles agreed. "Thrasymedes." He nodded to me. He was one of the few people who ever used my full name; I was generally "Thrass" to all and sundry.

"Achilles," I said. We'd exchanged names, we'd spoken the bare minimum—two unsociable men with my brother the only link between us.

We said our good-byes, and I dragged Antilochus, finally, into the light of day. I wondered, then, if he felt unwell, because he was never so calm and well-behaved about being summoned back to our father's tents.

I would know soon enough.

I don't even remember, any more, what my father wanted to see us about. It was unimportant in light of what we heard later that day.

"Memnon is coming from Ethiopia," someone said around the fire that night.

Antilochus was one of those people who can pretend that they are completely unfazed by major news; he raised an eyebrow, said, "Oh?" and continued to shovel in the Unidentifiable Stew, which itself was a running joke. Not that we were especially complaining; every man there would rather have had Unidentifiable Stew than go hungry.

I suppose my surprise—and my dismay—showed on my face, because somebody said, "It's a few weeks yet, Thrass. They gotta come up Africa first. You don't have to panic yet."

But I did. I had green troops under my control, who were young men, fresh from Hellas and eager for glory, and could not possibly understand the threat the Ethiopians posed to us; even had it been explained to them, I think they would have been more than happy to throw themselves under the wheels of Ethiopian chariots. Not that I could fault this sort of can-do attitude, but one must count one's costs. There was no earthly way I could keep them from hearing that the Ethiopians were coming, so I must work on some way of keeping them out of the fray, or at the very least, where they were likely to come to no harm.

I also had a brother, whom I could not control, and whom I knew would gladly throw himself in harm's way. At the thought of Prince Memnon and all his men, a chill ran up my spine.

Now that I think of it, it was a warning from the god.


	2. Chapter 2

I have never doubted that my father loved me, but I was never able to chat easily to him; years after the war, Aretus said something about feeling the same way, and he is a far less taciturn man than I. Perhaps it was just that we were more like our mother, who was silent and resigned, and our younger brothers were garrulous and friendly like our father. Nevertheless, that night, I think my father knew that I wanted to talk to him, and cut short a dice-party at someone else's tent.

"'M worried about Antilochus," I said, taking off my greaves. There had been some minor action later that day, which the Spartans had mostly run off and cleared out; it seemed as though the skirmish had been more on principle, to remind us all that we were still at war, than for any other reason. I hadn't been involved, but it had served to reawaken my fears about the Ethiopians.

"How come?"

I hemmed and hawed for a while, telling my father things he already knew: that Antilochus was young, that he was impulsive, thatI was afraid he would do something stupid, that I felt responsible for him.

"Thrasymedes," my father said gently, "you're losing perspective. We're talking about someone who ran away from home when he was fourteen so he could join us here." This was true.

"Yes," I said, "but you know, he's real young, and he doesn't have the experience the others and I have, I mean he's had a few men under his command but not all the time like we do, and—" I was running on at the mouth. I lacked only the hand-wringing to put on a bad performance, and also to make my father give some serious thought to my health.

"You really don't trust Antilochus not to do anything stupid in the field, do you?"

"Oh, I trust _him._ It's the Ethiopians I don't trust." As though I could stick a huge sign on my brother's back, threatening dire consequences if he were to be killed, or somehow stop the melee in case things got too rough.

"You're not supposed to trust them," my father said gently. "They _are_ our enemies' allies. But you can trust your brother, and you can trust the gods."

Cold comfort, when my brother was notorious for doing rash things, and when even the gods could not remain impartial—or so it seemed.

"I want to," I said. "I want to, Dad. You can't know how much."

I would have liked to tell Achilles to take care of Antilochus, for I could not (nor could I hope that my brother would listen to _me_), but it was completely untenable. And so I took my father's advice, and trusted the gods; I hung my spoils in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, which was neutral ground, although the Archer and I had never gotten on. My sudden piety was the talk of the camp; I overheard Odysseus telling someone, "Oh, have Thrass purify you about the other guy you killed when you were drunk; he's a good holy man." He was being sarcastic, of course, but that he would remark on it at all meant that it was getting out.

That night, and for many nights following, I prayed before bed; I swapped one of the rank-and-file a new tunic in exchange for some incense, which he might have stolen from Calchas (judging by the unusual amount of grumbling we all heard from the soothsayer). I pretended to myself that the reason the act of burning it brought me no comfort was because it had been stolen.

There are times when the gods do not hear your prayers, and although I knew this, I could not bring myself to accept it. My desperation spiraled like a vine up the side of a house: I prayed for the Ethiopians not to come. I prayed for them to get sick and die before they could fight, or for Memnon to be detained until we'd cleaned up Troy good, for somebody else to mop them up before Antilochus took the field. In my panic, I prayed that my brother would take sick or be wounded—oh, not enough that his life would be in danger, but just enough to keep him off the field.

I prayed like a woman newly widowed, who cannot yet accept the fact of death.

As a young boy, I used to do something that brought me comfort: count the number of my steps to a certain place, shut my eyes, and pretend that the thing in my heart would not come to be. Because then, I was convinced, I would get it.

I had, of late, reverted to this habit, as though a child's game would make the gods do what I was convinced all my prayers and entreaties would not. It was just sunup—we had gone the night without an attack. I don't know why I was surprised by this: they no longer had the numbers, nor could they afford to risk it. They were weakening.

I walked across the long line of tents; it must have still been early, because only the sentries were awake. I remember that the sun was up and struck everything, even the trampled, well-packed ground where we'd all been stomping about for the past nine years, into gold. Only half-aware of my surroundings, I began to count to myself. _One. Two. Three. Four._

Past the Argive tents. Diomedes' tent-flaps were still shut. He wasn't up yet. Of course, maybe he hadn't come in that morning; there might have been recon work to do last night, and he always pulled a certain amount of that. _Sixty-four. Sixty-five. Sixy-six. Sixty-seven._

Coming up on Ithacan tents, then. I knew some of the Ithacan archers; their tents were all shut up, too. There was a single sentry, looking very tired; he was clearly afraid to fall asleep. Nobody I recognized. Maybe Odysseus _was_ back, and we wouldn't hear of it until there was a council. _One hundred_ _sixty-six. One hundred sixty-seven. One hundred sixty-eight. One hundred sixty-nine._

By the time I reached the end of the line, I had taken seven hundred and ninety-five steps. I was in front of the Myrmidon tents, and I could hear the clang and clash of swords—somebody was up early and practicing. Vigorously, at that.

I shut my eyes and thought, _My brother will not live._ As though this childish game would ensure his safety. The old ritual brought me no comfort.

"Hey, Thrass, we're not going to hurt you. You don't have to look so scared."

I must have looked even more horrified when my eyes flew open, because Antilochus and Achilles both laughed. My brother, in fact, laughed so hard that he didn't look out for a small stone securely embedded in the ground near his feet, tripped on it, and was sent sprawling—which made him laugh all the harder, and Achilles snickered again.

"This is the finest Pylos has to offer!" I said, indicating my brother with a sweeping gesture.

Still grinning, Achilles raised an eyebrow. "How proud your father must be."

"He considers Antilochus one of our better spearmen," I said. My brother was still laughing, as though this pratfall was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him.

"The Trojans must run like frightened deer."

"No," Antilochus said, finally picking himself up, "I do silly things, and then while they're gawking, my brothers and my father finish 'em off." He brushed off his chiton.

"I didn't mean to interrupt anything," I said. "I'll go now, if you want."

"Stay and break bread with us," Achilles said, at exactly the same time as my brother said, "I just wanted Achilles to show me a few things. We weren't doing anything important." All the same, I got the impression, from the vaguely sulky tone of his voice, that Antilochus wanted me to remove myself; he was always jealous of his friends.

I wanted to stay. I wanted to watch the two of them circle each other, drawn swords in hands, wanted to watch them both at work: in the field, you don't really have a chance to appreciate it, because you're too busy watching your own back (and your opponent's technique). I wanted to see my brother happy and laughing.

"Good of you to offer," I said, "but I'd best get back to our part of the camp. Aretus came back from a raid." (This was true.) "You know Dad's going to want someone to help catalogue the spoils." (This was not necessarily true, in that it did not have to be me.)

They made the appropriate too-bad-you're-not-staying noises and waved me out. As I turned to go, some daimon put it in my head to say, "Oh, Antilochus? Try and make it back before noon, if you would. I heard we're breaking the drought this afternoon." This was also not necessarily true, but it was based in fact; everybody had seen Trojan heralds escorted to and from our camp, and everybody knew that there had been noises about single combat.

Antilochus crowed like a little boy. "That's the best news I've heard all day! Thanks, Thrass. I'll be there."

When I could no longer see him, I heard him say, "I don't have much time, then."

Achilles' voice said, "You want to do just a few more?"

"Sure, let's see if I can get this down. One more time before I go, then!"

The afternoon was so choreographed that it might as well have been painted on a sign and hung outside the Scaean Gates and in front of our camp: "Single combat, skirmish to follow. All combatants to retreat at nightfall."

The particularly uninspired single combat that afternoon involved some minor Argive and one of Priam's sons. (The witticisms about Priam still _having _living sons flew fast and furious.) I could almost hear them chanting, "Parry, parry, thrust, thrust" in the monotone of everybody's swordsmanship teacher—that was how dull the combat was. Needless to say, it decided nothing, but it did get the young and callow of both sides all whipped up and thirsty for blood.

The skirmish was equally uninspired; I gave a decent account of myself, killing three of my men. I managed to strip one of them, and got the greaves and breastplate off the other before a Trojan twice my size came bounding over to defend the body. Needless to say, I did not get to strip the third. All the same, there had been enough witnesses that anything I said about him would go undisputed, although I have often suspected that I was well-liked simply because my brother and father were. I was well aware that the other sons of Nestor were thought of as dull dogs.

I ask you, though: how could I measure up to Antilochus? How could _anybody_?

Watching his spear-work, I ached with pride and fear: one moment, I wanted to say, _That's my brother!_ to anyone who would listen, and the next, I wanted to rush to him and whisk him away, as though I were a god who could protect him. It was in those last days that I came to understand why men covet things that belong only to the gods.

_Father Zeus, Zeus the Thunderer, Zeus Soter the Preserver,_ I prayed, _promise me._ I did not say what I wanted him to promise me—perhaps it was too terrible to contemplate, or perhaps I myself did not know.

Echephron said later that I had raised my palms to the sky right there on the battlefield, and that only Teucer's quick thinking and lightning reflexes had saved me from an untimely death at the hands of a Trojan twice my size.


	3. Chapter 3

The spring dragged on into summer, and the Ethiopians drew ever closer. At first, the reports were vague and contradictory; they were here! No, they were on Cyprus! No, they had come through Egypt and were on their way over the sea to the Troad!

Since those concerned are long gone, I can say now that Agamemnon had many faults as a commander. However, let me give the man his due; he did not have to be convinced of the value of reconnaissance, and we always had good reconnaissance and good spies. If not for their tireless work, I do not think we would have had any accurate news about the movements of our enemies—for so they had already become.

Summer always saw the height of battle, because once it started to get dark early, we were reduced to night attacks, and nobody made war during the winter at all, except for isolated skirmishes or discreet cutting of supply lines. By that time, the Trojans had all but run out of supply lines to cut, and they could less easily afford to spare enough men to cut ours. It felt almost as though the long-awaited victory would be a dishonorable one: yes, so we would take the city. To what end? A couple of old men and some skinny women and children.

If one were so cynical, one ought to have enough sense of self-preservation to keep it to oneself. I threw myself into drilling the men under my command with a passion: they were young and green, just out of Pylos a few months back. Most of them were not out of their teens yet, and all of them still harbored romantic notions of warfare. Given that the odd, testing skirmish was not responsible for very many casualties, I was ill-equipped to prepare them for the shock they were due to receive upon fighting a real battle.

Hope rejuvenates people, and if Prince Memnon thought well enough of Priam to lead his men all the way to the Troad, then the Trojans were going to show him that they were, by all the gods, worth the effort. They got so that they believed it themselves.

The skirmishes grew longer; we fought harder, as though this were no longer a child's game or a pretense, but were the real thing again. Often, we still stopped at dusk; sometimes, we did not, and it might be pitch-black before both sides finally retreated. I remember a moment of panic late at night when I suddenly lost sight not only of Antilochus but also of my lieutenant, and had to remember not to fly after both of them shrieking like a woman.

And then one day, the thing that I feared came to pass.

The Ethiopians came.

I saw them first at dawn, which was only appropriate; they said that Prince Memnon was the son of rosy-fingered Eos. I could well believe it. His skin was darker than any I had ever seen, but he was as handsome, in his own way, as Achilles, and his armor was a showy golden affair. I've heard people say that it was pure gold, but I don't believe it; more probably, it was gilt. Whichever it was, it was well-chosen: it set off his dark skin and gave him the look of some beautiful, fierce, wild creature.

"Are you afraid?" my brother whispered to me.

"Yes," I whispered. For all our differences, for all the quarrels we'd had over the years, I could have no secrets from Antilochus, but one: that my fear was not for myself.

He smiled down at me from his chariot, not unkindly. "There's nothing to be afraid of, Thrass. I'm excited."

"You would be," I said, laughing and shaking my head, and for a moment, I forgot my fear. Some daimon put it in me to say, "Antilochus, promise me you'll be careful."

"There's glory to be had, and you talk of _care_?" He smiled and shook his head. "Of course I will, Thrass. I always am, especially with the horses." He patted Nikanor's rump; the beast whinnied and flicked its tail. "You take care of yourself, too."

"I'll do my best," I said.

"And take care of some Ethiopians."

"You, too." I laughed.

Antilochus swung himself out of the chariot, and, wonderful, unprecedented gift, threw his arms around me. He often did this to Achilles, whom I think tolerated it because he understood that Antilochus was more affectionate than he; he had never done it to me since he was old enough to be a soldier. "We're going to win," he told me. "We're going to mop the field with 'em."

"We sure are." In the blaze of my brother's enthusiasm, it was hard to disagree with him.

"The trumpets are sounding, you two," somebody said. They were indeed. "Take care," I whispered to Antilochus, "and keep an eye out for me, as I will for you. And don't overbook yourself."

"Same to you," he whispered back, climbing back into the chariot just in time for the trumpeters to sound the attack.

I'd been drilling my boys for months. I remember how absolutely clear and fearless I felt that day, how personally invincible, how confident I was in the men at my back. My father used to say, _Show them you trust them and they'll repay your trust_. They did that day, although at great cost to themselves; we lost two newly promoted officers and my lieutenant, as well as seventeen of the rank and file.

When you are fighting, you reach another place: you learn to recognize when someone is somewhere else, in that strange, gloriously clear space in his mind. Nothing seems real: you're not real, the man you're fighting isn't real, the battle raging around you isn't real. You are transformed. You have become a god, and the act of bloodshed almost seems holy.

I had reached that space. It was almost as though I were a priest, and the man before me was the sacrificial bull; he was so beautiful, in a young and sturdy way, that I felt sorry that it must be this way, but the pity faded and flickered, so that I could cut him down without feeling more than vestigial sorrow. I danced with Ethiopians and Trojans, with vestigial Thracians and Phrygians; that morning was an ecstasy of blood and sweat and dust.

I was a competent fighter. I will give myself that much. I don't have the hubris to class myself with an Achilles or a Diomedes, but then and there, I began to understand what they must feel, and to know a little of what made them what they were. Perhaps even my brother had a little of it in him; I will never know now.

When, finally, the battle-joy faded, I felt tired and sore, and I looked up in time to see my father's chariot collapsed somewhere, within eyeshot but too far for me to easily make the trip. He had managed to get out of it; it seemed that a wheel had come loose. Our father had had trouble with this wheel before and, in the manner of a man fanatically devoted to his chariot despite all evidence that it was no longer trustworthy, insisted that it was just because the stable boys didn't grease the axles properly. We knew better, but we could never convince him.

Ordinarily, I would have smiled and torn over to help our father out of his chariot, making some crack about the thing falling to pieces. Ordinarily, my father did not have a glittering blade poised above his head. Rooted where I stood, I clicked, squeaked, and gaped, glassy-eyed, at the terrible drama unfolding before me. I was vaguely cognizant of the clanking figures around me, the motions of sword and spear, the archers' victims fallen in the dust, but it simply did not register that any of this commotion might have any bearing on me personally.

"DON'T MOVE!" my brother's voice said, and oddly, contradictorily, the spell was broken; I felt my legs move reluctantly, taking weak-kneed steps towards my family gathered in the dust. Of course I couldn't make the journey uninterrupted; the odd spearman, or green Trojan boys who liked the look of my armor and wanted to take it off my dead body, occupied some of my attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I was always mindful of Antilochus' movements; he was busy with someone who seemed to have dark skin, an Ethiopian.

"Dad, I'm coming," I muttered, tossing aside the scrawny, chicken-chested corpse of a Trojan kid no older than my brother.

"Dad, I'm coming," Antilochus panted. Antilochus himself was caked with blood and dust, and when he flung out his arm to parry a blow, I saw the glint of the blade against his opponent's dark skin. "I'm coming. I'm going to fix this for you one more time before I go, and then I'm going to—"

He never finished his sentence.

I saw a flash of black and gold, and then my brother, mouth fallen open, sinking to his knees, the white of his tunic slowly turning red, the leather of his corselet pierced.

_Oh dear Zeus, no._

Memnon pulled his blade free, and a river of blood followed; Antilochus leaned unsteadily, mouth working, and toppled to the ground. By the time I sprinted, out of breath, to my father (who was still blinking, dazed) and my brother, Memnon was gone. So was Antilochus; his eyes were still surprised and faintly angry, as though he had realized just what had happened.

_No. NO!_

I didn't realize I'd said it aloud until Aretus and Echephron found us. Aretus had managed to keep his head and chased Memnon before losing sight of him in a cloud of Thracians; failing the pursuit, he had returned to us. So had a couple of gangly Trojan kids who wanted Antilochus' armor; we held them off, although it meant we had to wait on fixing Dad's chariot. By the time we'd managed to beat the kids away, a few Pylians had found us, and so had a few other Greeks.

"Thrasymedes."

"Achilles," I panted, wanting to take off my armor (which now felt like a portable oven) and not daring. By the tents, it would have been excusable. Thinking about the heat kept my mind off my brother, as though the discomfort killed the numbness.

"Did you get him?"

"No. Aretus chased him, but—"

"Don't worry. I'll get him." The words were a grim promise, but oddly comforting.


	4. Chapter 4

I've heard Aretus complain that he never got to see Achilles get Memnon. Personally, I'm glad that I didn't; I had seen enough bloodshed that day to glut me until the end of time. It was grisly enough when Achilles came back to our tent, holding something; he was covered in blood, which was only what you'd expect, and when he finally jerked the thing into the firelight, we saw that it was Memnon's head. "Here you go," he said, and handed it to our father before disappearing again.

The eyes were cloudy, the mouth open, and streams of blood had issued forth from nose and mouth; Memnon bled as red as any of us. Odysseus used to say that Achilles never knew when to stop; I had always written this off as jealousy, misunderstanding, exaggeration, but looking at Memnon's head, I knew that it was true. I had no desire to touch it, and wound up having one of the infantrymen put it in a wicker basket.

"Got his armor, too," Achilles said when he came back.

"Oh," my father said from the corner where he'd dozed off. "Did you, now?"

"Yeah. I thought you might want to have it."

Aretus and I looked at each other. Then again, Memnon would have stripped Antilochus, if we'd given him half a chance. We all stripped our enemies; there was no shame in it. And Memnon _had_ had exceptionally fine armor. "Sure," I managed, "bring it on in, whenever you get a chance." I don't know how I managed to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth, which felt incredibly dry.

Looking back on it now, it seems to me that I sleepwalked my way through the days after my brother's death. I don't remember very much of what happened immediately afterwards, except for parts of the funeral, and I can't even remember much of the way I felt—just an incredible, shocked numbness, and the feeling that nothing would ever, ever be right again.

Antilochus had been the baby of the family. When he was little, and we weren't so very much older than he had been when he came to Troy, our father had impressed on us the importance of looking after him. In time, Father no longer had to repeat the charge, but it stuck with us, especially after we discovered he'd run away from home to join us at Troy.

Small wonder, then, that I felt that I had failed him, and my father, and myself. I was glad that Echephron was writing to Mother; I couldn't have been able to put into words how sorry I was that all this had happened. It had torn her up enough the first time, when she hadn't known where Antilochus had gone or why. At least this time she would know where he was, although not why—never why.

None of us could have conveyed to Mother that, in the end, there was no why, and Antilochus' death, stupid and senseless though it was, was just a logical part of this entire grisly nightmare played out across the Troad.

Because he was so much younger than we were—a different generation, really—I had always assumed that Antilochus would bury us. I had known, coming to Troy, that it was likely one of us at least would have to be left behind in the grave mounds, and that we were lucky to have made it so far into the war without a death in the family.

I remember watching, dry-eyed, as people came in and out the tent with condolences, apologies, reminiscences; we played the parts of old soldiers, stoic in the face of adversity, as though there was nothing to be done for it. In a way, there wasn't, but I still wanted to curse the gods, as though this weren't the rankest of impiety—still hoped against hope that it had been a nightmare, or that death was an ill-timed practical joke and that my brother might still be brought back.

When, finally, during a break in the skirmishes, we laid him on the pyre and the fire devoured the dry wood first, I knew that there was no hope, no chance that he might ever return to us outside a dream. The flames engulfed Memnon's dark head and golden armor—we had lain them on the pyre too, not sure what else to do with them—and when they reached my brother's feet, I turned, not wanting to watch him go forever.

"He was a good kid," Achilles said. I nearly jumped, and realized that he had been standing behind me in the mourners' queue.

"Yeah."

"'M sorry."

"Ah, well, what can you do." I could feel the tears stinging my eyes, and forbore; I was not going to weep now. I had a pillow back at the tent; I could cry into that, at night, when no one would see me.

"It's not fair."

"No."

Neither of us were inherently social; the conversation died at that point. I couldn't very well say, _But you have no brothers—you couldn't know what I feel_, and he couldn't very well rail against the war. It was his calling, his element; it might have been Antilochus', too. What was the sense in their earning glory that never died, if their bodies were going to be burnt and scattered?

When I turned back around again, all that remained was a handful of dust and a few white scraps of bone, just enough to put in an urn. Antilochus was gone.


End file.
